(02-12-2015 12:51 PM)Dieter Wrote: Unbelievable – that's exactly what I did in 1995! I also used Turbo Pascal 6.0...

Turbo Pascal has been mentioned in various posts here, so I thought the following would be worth mentioning. I've used Turbo Pascal 6.0 for quick programming projects since the early 1990s. When its 16-bit executable became obsolete on newer Windows PCs (such as when I switched from Windows XP to Windows 7) I continued using it within DOSBox. Just a month ago I discovered Free Pascal and can now compile my 80+ old *.PAS programs on a 64-bit Windows 7 PC. It even works with those that used VGA graphics. The conversion required only compiler configuration and no changes to my old source code (except when 80386 inline assembly code was used). It is supported on many platforms in addition to Windows, has a command-line interface, a Free Pascal IDE that looks just like the old text-based Turbo Pascal IDE, or the more modern Lazarus IDE.

I've been a Turbo Pascal fanatic from CP/M days to today. I still run TP3 in DOSBOX for really quick and dirty programs. While I do have most of the Turbo Pascal compilers, I find TP3 to be about as fast as you can get for short programs.

I have used FreePas for production programs. It's a very nice system.

But I really don't do much production programming any more. Most of my programs now are "filter" programs - take a text file, massage it, and generate new text file in the format I need. Nothing really special.

Hello Thomas. That is an interesting project and thanks for the pointer. I read in your summary that "It implements the subset of the language and standard library that I needed to run these five programs." I tried running some of my old short text-output Turbo Pascal programs and the 6th one I tried compiles and runs! (:-) So it is indeed a subset of the language.

I wrote several books about Turbo Pascal in the 80s and they were published by John Wiley. I think the best ones were a Turbo Algorithms trilogy that I wrote with Keith Weiskamp and Ron Pronk. The books covered similar topics written in Turbo Basic, Turbo Pascal, Turbo C++, and Turbo Prolog. The books sold well.

(02-21-2015 08:44 PM)Bill (Smithville NJ) Wrote: I've been a Turbo Pascal fanatic from CP/M days to today. I still run TP3 in DOSBOX for really quick and dirty programs.

There are two very nice DOS emulators for gnu/linux... I run both in Mint;

1) DOSBox
2) DOS in a Box

DOSBox is better because it supports screen and sound (just like its the late 1980s all over again).

Anyway, TP runs great in these environments, and is a ton of fun (if you remember the day); however, having said that, the alternative I would recommend to anyone from the Pascal days (or the ubiquitous BASIC days) is Python.

If you are new to Python, start with Python3. There is plenty on-line to get you started, but I would also recommend Mark Summerfield's book Programing in Python 3.

Pascal and BASIC were great back in the day, but in a modern world Python has them both beat hands down... Python is fun, rewarding, easy to learn, easy to adapt, and has a rich library so that real world problems can be solved right way (you spend your time problem solving and less time in semantics).

(02-22-2015 10:45 PM)MarkHaysHarris777 Wrote: Pascal and BASIC were great back in the day, but in a modern world Python has them both beat hands down...
marcus

Hi Marcus,

Ahhh - you are assuming I am living in the modern world. Since I am mainly retired, I live most of my programming time in the "back in the day". It's more fun. My main system to play with is the Ominibook 430 notebook. Much more fun than doing stuff on a modern PC. Now days, I really don't have any reason to learn new languages.

Now to really regress - other than Turbo Pascal, my favorite is Tiny Pascal. Compiler and Z-80 translator is written in Basic, based on the three part series in Byte magazine. It's integer only. I have translated it to run in the original MSDOS Basica and then I run final Z-80 code in a TRS-80 emulator. Great fun. My ultimate goal is to translate it to Sharp PC-1600 basic and have an integer Pascal compiler running on a handheld.

(02-23-2015 01:11 AM)Dave Britten Wrote: I haven't tried it myself, but I'll bet you could get Delphi working on an OB 300-430 without too much fuss (as long as it's okay with Standard mode Win 3.1, at least).

Hi Dave,

But I don't won't to get Delphi working. I don't run Win3.1 on the OB-430.

(02-22-2015 10:45 PM)MarkHaysHarris777 Wrote: Pascal and BASIC were great back in the day, but in a modern world Python has them both beat hands down...
marcus

Ahhh - you are assuming I am living in the modern world. Since I am mainly retired, I live most of my programming time in the "back in the day". It's more fun. My main system to play with is the Ominibook 430 notebook. Much more fun than doing stuff on a modern PC. Now days, I really don't have any reason to learn new languages.

No problema, really; I totally understand. I do quite a bit of 'back in the day' myself. I still have two towers that boot into real DOS 6.1 (I've got both MSDOS, and PCDOS) and from there I run GWBASIC, QBASIC, MIX C, and DEBUG. I have Turbo Pascal, too, but don't use it. At any rate, I do quite a bit of 8086 machine programming, and lots of DOC C and BASIC. Most of my stuff has been ported over to my gnu/linux boxes so I can run in DOSBox. Interesting stuff, that DOSBox will let you run 'real' MSDOS images.

(02-23-2015 12:53 AM)Bill (Smithville NJ) Wrote: Now to really regress - other than Turbo Pascal, my favorite is Tiny Pascal. Compiler and Z-80 translator is written in Basic, based on the three part series in Byte magazine. It's integer only. I have translated it to run in the original MSDOS Basica and then I run final Z-80 code in a TRS-80 emulator. Great fun. My ultimate goal is to translate it to Sharp PC-1600 basic and have an integer Pascal compiler running on a handheld.

I have the original PC-1 (was never branded that way, but that's what we all called it) made by SHarp for Radio Shack back in 1980. Radio Shack called it the TRS-80 Pocket Computer; programmed in BASIC (sort-of) had like 1492 steps and shared program memory with variables (one working up, the other working down). Mine is starting to show signs of LCD deterioration in the 24 character alpha numeric display, but otherwise still looks pretty good, powers up, and runs! Mine takes (4) 675 hearing aid batts (I'll see if I can power it up tomorrow, then I'll post a pic). That silly thing is 35 years old! ... oh, man. By the way, this is what's wrong with buying vintage calcs (like the Sharp, or the HP15c) because the LCDs from that era were not designed for the long haul... and are starting to go dark. Theoretically, the electronics might last 'forever,' but the LCD won't.

Greetings, ... well, I was able to find 675 batteries today ... turns out they're the only batts you can buy in Minnesota (without) sales tax, because they are considered 'wearing apparel,' because they are 'hearing aid' batteries; and no, I did not volunteer the fact that they were going to power-up a 35 year old vintage calculator that hasn't had power applied in over thrity years!

So, here it is campers:

I was wrong about its memory (give me a break, its been more than thirty years!) -- 1424 steps, 178 memories... similar to the WP34s, the more memories you use, the less steps you have...

... here we are calculating PI... took a little over 1 full second !

The calculator was given to me in payment of a work debt... well, I did this programming job for a guy who was short of cash at the time; he offered to trade me this calculator for services rendered (it was a good trade at the time, but today I would just hold out for the cash). This vintage calculator (pocket computer) was for the day quite a sophisticated instrument. You can see that the LCD is beginning to go dark; but still functions after 35 years!

I love those old pocket computers, even if the Sharp ones make it either clumsy or impossible to keep multiple programs in memory. The Casios make it a little easier with multple program spaces, though memory is still pretty tight.

Anybody ever used one of those Japanese Sharp/Casio pocket computers from (I think) the '90s? I see a lot of them on ebay, and the inclusion of both BASIC and C on most of them is rather intriguing. I think they were meant for use in CS classes.

(02-23-2015 11:24 PM)Dave Britten Wrote: I love those old pocket computers, even if the Sharp ones make it either clumsy or impossible to keep multiple programs in memory. The Casios make it a little easier with multple program spaces, though memory is still pretty tight.

Anybody ever used one of those Japanese Sharp/Casio pocket computers from (I think) the '90s? I see a lot of them on ebay, and the inclusion of both BASIC and C on most of them is rather intriguing. I think they were meant for use in CS classes.

Dave - It's been many years, but the Sharp PC-E500 and -500S were excellent and fast machines from the mid-90s with a pretty wide BASIC vocabulary, and they also could use C and assembler IIRC. These may have been Z80-based, like the PC-1600. I don't think the compiler and assembler were built-in, but it's been too many years to be sure. I've hunted for them on TAS every now and then, but they seem to either end at odd times (for me) or be priced beyond my curiosity threshold at the time. And to think I had a drawer full of them when I worked at Sharp... who woulda thought?

(02-23-2015 06:34 AM)MarkHaysHarris777 Wrote: I still have two towers that boot into real DOS 6.1 (I've got both MSDOS, and PCDOS) and from there I run GWBASIC, QBASIC, MIX C, and DEBUG.

If you work with DEBUG, I'd like to recommend to try out the DR-DOS DEBUG (1.50 or higher). It uses a syntax compatible with the MS-DOS/PC DOS equivalent, but is much more powerful. Not only does it support newer opcodes, it also supports an extended command syntax, many additional commands, symbols, 16-bit and 32-bit modes, various display modes and filters, software and hardware breakpoints, macros, arithmetics, and uncountable other usability enhancements. It also has (limited) conditional scripting and auto-commenting facilities. For a start, typing ?? at the "-" prompt will invoke a built-in interactive help system giving eight screens full of command info in summary style.

Quote:By the way, this is what's wrong with buying vintage calcs (like the Sharp, or the HP15c) because the LCDs from that era were not designed for the long haul... and are starting to go dark. Theoretically, the electronics might last 'forever,' but the LCD won't.

That's right, most old liquid crystal displays have lost much contrast over the decades - some have faded so much that they are no longer usable today, unfortunately. In the 1980s and 1990s, the lifetime of LCDs has been estimated to about a decade. I remember having read notes in camera manuals to have the display replaced after that time. I haven't found such notes in recent manuals, but this may be down to the fact that digital cameras aren't expected to last this long for other reasons - Lithium-Ion batteries have a lifetime of 3-5 years, and OLED displays are typically considered dead after that time as well...

These were nice little machines. I'm sure you know that the Radio Shack TRS-80 PC-1 was actually an OEM model of the Sharp PC-1211, don't you? While I haven't used the PC-1211 myself, I still have fond memories of its later sibling, the PC-1403 (original 8 KB model), for which I wrote a system monitor, disassembler and assembler, helped document the processor opcodes (Hitachi ESR-H SC61860), reverse-engineered the calculator's hardware and most of the operating system and added hooks for my own extensions to support a total of 72 KB SRAM (bank-switched), a switchable double-speed option, a second interface (15-pin serial / parallel) in addition to the 11-pin standard interface to connect to a number of external measurement devices like a mobile data logger to help optimize the location of wind turbines. I also developed interfaces to hook it up to an old EA analog X-Y writer and a Commodore color plotter. Somewhen later, I helped developing a DOS macro cross-assembler for the Sharp family of calculators as well as several other platforms. :-)

(02-23-2015 11:24 PM)Dave Britten Wrote: I love those old pocket computers, even if the Sharp ones make it either clumsy or impossible to keep multiple programs in memory. The Casios make it a little easier with multple program spaces, though memory is still pretty tight.

Anybody ever used one of those Japanese Sharp/Casio pocket computers from (I think) the '90s? I see a lot of them on ebay, and the inclusion of both BASIC and C on most of them is rather intriguing. I think they were meant for use in CS classes.

Hi Dave,

Same here - I started out with the Sharp PC-1211, moved to the PC-1500A with four color plotter/printer, then added a PC-1250A and PC-1262.

Finally settled on the PC-1600. I have a bunch of memory modules (8KB to 256 KB) which gives me a file system and a way to save programs. Plus about 77K of basic programming space. Add the RS-232 interface cable and can easily save/load to a PC. My favorite part of the PC-1600 is that it has a Z-80 processor which my first personal computer had. So fun to program in machine code.

The Casio's have interested me also. Especially the Z-1/Z-1GR/FX-890P series which has a 16 bit processor and might be pretty fast. But I think it was for Japan only, so no English manual. But I did find an English manual that some one had written for it.

The other Casio that has always interested me is the PB-2000C which had multiple language modules - in addition to Assembly, Basic & C, there are the LISP, Prolog and the very rare Pascal modules.

(02-24-2015 12:33 AM)matthiaspaul Wrote: These were nice little machines. I'm sure you know that the Radio Shack TRS-80 PC-1 was actually an OEM model of the Sharp PC-1211, don't you?

Yup. Well, that's why I posted the pics... with the mention of the Sharps/ I have a little small Sharp collection too. Many of them from the 80s (graphing, science, pocket computers). The thing about the TRS80 is that there weren't that many of them before they were discontinued and most of those look really bad today; and forget replacing the display, there just aren't any like that/ Well, you might find a 24 character one line display but it would not have the correct annunciators and the size would probably not be right. I am not hearing of anyone having them repaired.

I have an old Fluke meter from back in my field engineering days (that sucker was almost $2000 dollars new) and its display is black (gone). sigh